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CARACAS— Protesters battled soldiers in the streets of Caracas again on Wednesday as a student was shot dead, the 23rd fatality from a month of demonstrations against Venezuela's socialist government.

Thousands of supporters and foes of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro were on the capital's streets for rival rallies marking a month since the first bloodshed of the recent unrest around the South American OPEC nation.

Trouble began when National Guard troops blocked opposition marchers trying to break out of Plaza Venezuela to reach the state ombudsman's office.

Students threw stones and petrol bombs while security forces fired tear gas and turned water cannons on them.

Witnesses saw dozens of people leaving injured.

In the latest fatality, a 23-year-old student was shot in central Carabobo state, apparently on a street outside his home. Opposition activists blamed armed government supporters in what they say is a wave of attacks on students, but the state governor said the shot came from snipers among the protesters.

Maduro, a 51-year-old former bus driver who won election last year to succeed the late Hugo Chavez, has declared victory over what he calls an attempted “coup” against him and appears to be in little danger of being toppled.

Students, though, are vowing to keep the protests going, meaning protracted instability could bring more bloodshed and represent a further drag on Venezuela's troubled economy.

Victims on both sides

On Feb. 12, two opposition supporters and a pro-government activist were shot dead in Caracas, galvanizing the fledgling protest movement and leading to near daily clashes in Caracas and some western Andean cities like San Cristobal and Merida.

The 23 people killed include victims on both sides.

“The opposition are causing all the violence. They should think a bit smarter. The street barricades make no sense, they just bring violence,” said government supporter Marcos Alacayo, 46, among hundreds of Chavistas at a square in east Caracas.

“They're trying to make out the nation is in a bad state, but that just isn't true. More people have access to healthcare, education and good food than ever. That's what they don't understand. Before Chavez, no one had what we have now,” added Alacayo, who works for a state-run higher education program.

Of the more than 1,300 people arrested since anti-government demonstrations began at the start of February, 92 are still behind bars, according to the government.

Those held include 14 security officials, some of whom are implicated in the deaths of two of those shot in the Feb. 12 rallies. More than 300 people have been injured in the unrest.

“Today we're marching to denounce the repression. There can't be impunity. Why do they attack us when we are demonstrating freely? The security forces are bowing to a political ideology when their duty is to protect the people,” said law student Agnly Veliz, 22, at the opposition rally.

Veliz said she was at the fateful Feb. 12 rally and has been protesting every day since then. “What's the point of graduating while the country is in chaos? If I lose the year but help to achieve a better Venezuela, then it's worth it.”

Complaint list

Although their movement is smaller than those in Brazil, Ukraine and the Middle East, the protesters in Venezuela share a similarly amorphous list of grievances and causes.

Some want Maduro out now. All complain about crime, inflation and shortages of basic goods. Demands to free detainees, especially hardline opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, have become an increasingly loud cry on the streets.

The protests have wrong-footed the moderate leadership of Venezuela's opposition coalition, including two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who lost to Maduro by just 1.5 percentage points in last year's vote.

His strategy had been to work patiently in grassroots communities while waiting for the next electoral opportunity, parliamentary elections in 2015, but now firebrand opposition leaders and students are taking the lead.

Fellow Latin American nations, though deeply worried, have taken a relatively low-key approach to Venezuela's crisis.

Leftist allies have backed Maduro's right to defend himself against “coup plotters” while more conservative governments have urged dialogue but in moderate terms.

Maduro broke diplomatic ties with Panama after it pushed for a meeting of the Organization of American States to discuss Venezuela. Caracas views the OAS as a U.S. pawn.

Foreign ministers from South America's Unasur group of governments were meeting in Chile on Wednesday to discuss Venezuela.

“We'll be in favor of protecting and promoting human rights, but at the same time we can't accept violent mobilizations that seek to bring down a legitimately constituted government,” Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz told reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Venezuela's neighbors should take the lead in helping mediate the situation, and rejected Maduro's repeated accusations that Washington was deliberately stirring up trouble against him.

“We've become an excuse. We're a card they play,” Kerry told a U.S. House of Representatives committee when asked about Venezuela. “And I regret that, because we've very much opened up and reached out in an effort to say, 'it doesn't have to be this way'.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that his country could face further consequences to what he called its “already strained economy” if Moscow does not fully comply with a cease-fire in Ukraine. The two met, on Monday, on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, where Kerry outlined human rights violations in Russian-annexed Crimea and eastern Ukraine. VOA State Department correspondent Pam Dockins reports from Geneva.

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